Paper Wallet

Did you get an artwork on a paper wallet? Awesome!

…But, how, and what’s a paper wallet?

Imagine a PO Box or a keyed mailbox in an apartment complex. These are public addresses, where anyone can send something to them. Only a person with the key to that box/mailbox can open it to take things out. It’s very similar in crypto, with a public address and a private key that allows access/control.

Public addresses are created/derived from a private key, and knowing the private key grants full control over the public addresses that the key creates. Private keys are long strings of ‘random’ characters, but they can be stored as a series of words (seed phrase), which is much more convenient. The relationship between these two elements is crucial to understand: there’s a public address and a private key (encoded as a seed phrase) that generates and controls it.

Anyone with access to a private key has full control over assets in the addresses it creates!

A seed phrase should never be shared or stored digitally – not even in a photo!

The term ‘wallet’ can be a bit confusing as people use it to mean different things: they might be referring to their public address, or the address and private key/seed phrase combo, or just their private key/seed phrase. A ‘paper wallet’ specifically refers to a piece of paper that holds a private key’s seed phrase, from which many addresses could be derived. On paper wallets I give out, the public address I use follows MetaMask browser extension style (don’t worry much about this).

Here’s an example paper wallet (do not use this, it’s exposed):

To create these paper wallets, I used a secure and offline computer to generate the keys and print. I kept no record, so don’t lose it! There’s a lot to proper crypto security, but until you can devote some time to learn, let’s keep it really simple. With your paper wallet and seed phrase, take Gandalf’s advice: keep it secret, keep it safe!

You can view your public address (the ‘0x….’ string) online anytime. And if you want to skip some steps, you can find it by looking up the owner of the artwork that was given to you on the paper wallet, on a NFT marketplace like opensea.io, or for tokens from At the Still Point of the Turning World: Algorithmic Self Portrait, 2025, here: https://www.artblocks.io/collection/at-the-still-point-of-the-turning-world-algorithmic-self-portrait-2025-by-matto?tab=Artworks

The paper wallet you have is secure enough for getting a free artwork, but you shouldn’t trust it for any other assets. If you want to explore crypto or NFT artwork making/collecting, you should really create your own seed phrase and public address pair. After which, you can transfer assets from the paper wallet to your new, more secure public address. Many people start with a MetaMask.io browser wallet, but if you’re planning on storing anything of significant value ($1000 or more) or minting your own artwork to sell, you should absolutely use a ‘hardware wallet’ like a Ledger or Trezor (only buy from their websites).

To transfer a token from a paper wallet I gave you to a more secure account:

1. 1. Generate a more secure seed phrase (you can use MetaMask browser extension wallet, brave browser wallet, or a hardware wallet), and copy the public address.
   2. Import the paper wallet seed phrase into a MetaMask wallet, and copy the public address – it should match the one printed on the paper wallet.
   3. Send a small amount of Eth to the paper wallet’s public address (where the art is). 0.005 Eth should be plenty.
   4. Send the artwork from the paper wallet’s public address to the more secure seed phrase’s public address, then send any remaining Eth there as well.
   5. Have MetaMask ‘forget’ the paper wallet’s seed phrase, and throw away the paper wallet.

I’m planning on writing more about crypto security, and I’ll update this page with links when I do. Until then, feel free to message me any questions you have!

_/\_

Matto